friends, a vessel from the Vineyard!--a whaler from the Vineyard!"[1]

[1] A port in the State of New York.

And the sailor brandishing the harpoon, repeated, not without emotion,
the name which he loved so well--the name of his birthplace.

But as it could not be expected that the _Maria Stella_ would come to
reclaim the animal harpooned by her, they resolved to begin cutting it
up before decomposition should commence. The birds, who had watched
this rich prey for several days, had determined to take possession of
it without further delay, and it was necessary to drive them off by
firing at them repeatedly.

The whale was a female, and a large quantity of milk was taken from
it, which, according to the opinion of the naturalist Duffenbach,
might pass for cow's milk, and, indeed, it differs from it neither in
taste, colour, nor density.

Pencroft had formerly served on board a whaling-ship, and he could
methodically direct the operation of cutting up--a sufficiently
disagreeable operation lasting three days, but from which the settlers
did not flinch, not even Gideon Spilett, who, as the sailor said,
would end by making a "real good castaway."

The blubber, cut in parallel slices of two feet and a half in
thickness, then divided into pieces which might weigh about a thousand
pounds each, was melted down in large earthen pots brought to the
spot, for they did not wish to taint the environs of Granite House,
and in this fusion it lost nearly a third of its weight.

But there was an immense quantity of it; the tongue alone yielded six
thousand pounds of oil, and the lower lip four thousand. Then, besides
the fat, which would insure for a long time a store of stearine and
glycerine, there were still the bones, for which a use could doubtless
be found, although there were neither umbrellas nor stays used at
Granite House. The upper part of the mouth of the cetacean was,
indeed, provided on both sides with eight hundred horny blades, very
elastic, of a fibrous texture, and fringed at the edge like great
combs, of which the teeth, six feet long, served to retain the
thousands of animalculae, little fish, and molluscs, on which the whale
fed.

The operation finished, to the great satisfaction of the operators,
the remains of the animal were left to the birds, who would soon make
every vestige of it disappear, and their usual daily occupations were
resumed by the inmates of Granite House.

However, before return